Chapter 156 — In the Deep Sea

Relying on the innate appeal of an ancient hero and on the practical prestige Gao Yang had earned by putting himself in the front line to protect his people, the measures he promulgated took effect very quickly across this land. Even measures that were difficult to advance given the background of the current era—planning town roads, building sewers before houses, prohibiting people from relieving themselves in the streets—and that were hard to explain to the settlers, were carried out thoroughly and well. It seemed people did not truly care what the purpose of these measures was (even though Gao Yang had sent people to constantly explain the significance of each policy); so long as the lord said it, then it must surely be right.

But Gao Yang knew that the efficiency produced by such blind trust could not be relied upon for long. It would inevitably be worn away, little by little, as institution after institution and law after law were promulgated—and to maintain that rate of implementation, there were only two ways.

First, make as many of the new institutions and laws as possible produce benefits visible to the naked eye—or at the very least, make the people believe that the improvement in their lives was brought about by those institutions and laws, so that they would be glad to follow the new laws.

Second, promote education, so that the people learned to think and to discriminate, so that they could truly understand what their lord was saying—and, on that premise, still support the laws and rules of the territory.

The second would not only maintain the current rate of implementation, but would also vastly raise the efficiency of every task in the territory.

But... where were the teachers to be found? Especially since Gao Yang's plan called for universal education in extraordinary knowledge—for which such teachers would be even harder to find.

Ordinary people who could read and count might be hired with money, but those who were truly learned and capable of higher-level instruction were very hard to find. They would never be willing to exercise patience in explaining what runes were and how to calculate to a noisy crowd of "lowly paupers"—not even for money.

Perhaps he ought to ask Jenny. She might know some extraordinary professionals who had fallen on hard times in high society... In the spirit of "when the going gets tough, think of a way out," those mages who were about to starve to death ought to be fairly easy to buy over...

Meanwhile, in the distant sea far to the east of the continent, the storm was gradually dispersing.

The violent, surging water elementals returned to the atmosphere and the ocean. The energy that had accumulated in the atmosphere had been almost entirely poured out upon the island reefs before, blasting the whole reef cluster to pieces; now the residual energy was settling down along with the water elementals, gradually returning to the embrace of nature.

The blood of the cultists had dyed a stretch of the sea red, and the smell of blood had drawn the predators of the ocean—but those predators only circled warily around the outer edges of these waters, not daring in the slightest to approach this place that still gave off an aura of danger.

In the end, the Sons of the Storm could not withstand the true storm. Faced with the natural disaster conjured by the great host of sea demons, they had held out for a long, long time with all their strength, but in the end they had been forced to abandon this "domain of miracles."

At the cost of nearly a third of their followers' lives, they had forced a way out through the surging ocean and fled this place.

Now these island reefs had returned to the hands of the sea demons once more.

On the surface of the sea, many huge and terrifying leviathans still prowled—those bodies floating on the water, covered in carapace and bone spurs and brimming with the radiance of magic, struck awe into the heart. But soon, one after another, the leviathans sank beneath the waves, and moments later, a number of female figures rose up out of the seawater.

They had beautiful faces, elegant and well-proportioned figures, and eyes as full of intelligence and life as any human's, yet across their cheeks and arms a fine scalelike covering could faintly be seen. The scales were not fearsome; rather they lent an oddly bewitching beauty. And as they churned the seawater, the structure of their lower bodies would from time to time break the surface—long tails like sea serpents, or fish tails like those of fish.

Some even had tentacles like an octopus, complete with suckers.

These intelligent beings of the water looked at the reefs and islets the cultists had left behind after their retreat, but they had not the slightest interest in the so-called sacred vessels and altars the cultists had guarded to the death.

One siren with long sky-blue hair gazed out toward the island, while another surfaced from the water and swam over to this sky-blue-haired leader. "Those brain-sick humans have run off, General Vanessa."

The siren called General Vanessa furrowed her brow. "What a baffling species. I clearly remember that a few hundred years ago they weren't this mad—how is it that now they can't even hold a conversation…"

"Probably because they can't live in the sea. Stuck on dry land all day, they've suffocated their brains to ruin."

"Never mind, it doesn't matter." The siren general shook her head. "Since those brain-sick humans have all run off, we can get back to work."

"Then…" A eager, eager-to-try look came over the young siren soldier's face. "Shall we go down and keep digging for squid?"

The siren general laughed and nodded hard. "Yes. Keep digging for squid."

"Keep digging for squid!" "Dig for squid!" "Big squid!"

The sirens' cheers rose in a chorus, and then one after another they whipped up the waves and, lashing tails shaped like sea serpents, fish, and octopuses, rushed down toward the seabed to continue the work they had long since planned to carry out in these waters—

To the deep sea, to the ocean floor, to keep digging up that "big squid" who for some unknown reason had died down there, whose shattered remains had carpeted an entire stretch of the seabed, and which no amount of digging could ever finish…